1. The youngest person tasered by police was a 12-year-old schoolgirl

The 12-year-old girl, from Merseyside, was shot with a 50,000 volt stun gun after threatening to harm herself. Our revelation kicked off a national debate about the use of Tasers on children. Children’s charities condemned the use of Tasers on youngsters, but ACPO lead on armed policing Simon Chesterman insisted Tasers are safe.

All credit to BBC’s Panorama for making this one stick, but we first revealed Comic Relief’s decidedly unethical investment strategy back in August in the People newspaper. In fact, we’d spoken to the story’s unstoppable, original source Andrew Goodwill four years earlier and carried out detailed research showing exactly where money donated to the charity goes. It was Chris Atkins’ Panorama show, however, in December, that finally caused the media storm it deserved. The programme was good enough to credit OpenWorld News director Guy Basnett for his earlier research.

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